Percolation theory in engineering: a practical approach

Engineers work with a great variety of materials including porous media, polymers, composites, etc. A powerful tool for studying their behaviour and to model many of their properties, is the so-called Percolation Theory. However, many engineers face these types of problems via classical theories without the knowledge of the capabilities of innovative approaches such as percolation or sets renormalisation theory. In fact, many engineering problems could be satisfactory solved by resorting to the above mentioned theories. A review of the fundamentals of Percolation Theory as well as some examples of their use in solving actual engineering problems, is presented.